Mac and Music News

The virtual synth Albino by LinPlug comes with a cutting-edge selection of presets designed by sound designer Rob Papen. LinPlug has updated it to v2.1.1 and fixes: crash when using heavy Digital Oscillator Pitch Modulation fixed, and gator Effect did not work in some Filter / Effects routings.

More info on LinPlug web site.

ApulSoft has ported the LoFi Wavetable Synth Chip32 (freeware) by Sam to OS X as VSTi and Audio Units. Chip32 produces old school electronic sounds and lets you edit its wavetable graphically. It also features many midi control options, an ADSR envelope and a basic filter

LinPlug announces the release of the Bigtone Ambient Signature Set for Albino 2. It takes Albino to a different soundscape. Over 520 professional patches from the mind of Nico Herz from Bigtone, well organized into categories : 32 Ambient Synth patches, 36 Arpegiator patches, 80 Bass patches, 89 Drum patches, 54 Fx patches, 13 Keys patches, 12 Oldschool Synth patches, 10 One Fingered Arps patches, 79 Pads patches, 25 Semi Real patches, 49 Sequence patches and 44 Trance-Techno Synth patches.

The Bigtone Ambient Signature Set is available for online purchase from the LinPlug website as $79.

NUSofting releases HarpTime and Microrock, in both Audio Units and VSTi formats for Mac OS X. HarpTime is a virtual reproduction of the Celtic harp and others, such as Japanese Koto, Paraguayan and African harps. Microrock is a monophonic synthesizer made for bass, lead and powerchord lines, designed to give aggressive and expressive sound for solos and riffs.

Harptime Pro costs $59.90, Harptime Fun is $29.90 and Microrock Pro $46.90.

Rax is a virtual rack for live Audio units hosting. Granted Software updated it to version 1.2.2, and it now features : mixer channel Mute is now remote controllable, setting mixer channel volume to zero eliminates instrument load on CPU, MIDI notes are no longer buffered when a rack is deactivated or a channel is muted, and external sync is now passing through tempo data to all AudioUnits.

Fraunhofer IIS, Thomson and Agere Systems have announced the launching of MP3 "surround". Its caracteristics are roughly the following : high resolution support, the final file size will weigh half as much as a file normally zipped in this norm, format compatible with all existing MP3 players and softwares.

The player/encoder for Mac OS X will be available on December 17th.

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Native Instruments announced that the NI Komplete 2 bundle is now even more complete. Now every purchase of the bundle also includes the drum sampling sofware Battery 2 and the soft synth Absynth 3 at no extra cost.

Updates are not physically included in the NI Komplete 2 package, but will be delivered free of charge after the bundle has been authorized. NI Komplete 2 costs $1149 or 999 euros.

Digidesign has updated Pro Tools to version 6.7cs3 for both TDM and LE systems. This update fixes :

- It was not possible to trim MIDI notes across more than one track at a time, in Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools TDM.
- Using Auto Region Fade In/Out could cause a pop on region boundaries in Pro Tools TDM.